No surrender
Sir: Your readers may well find it distaste- ful that Andrew Roberts (Letters, 4 Jan- uary) does not have the grace to admit that he was utterly wrong about the army plan against the SS and that he pontificated in gross ignorance of the literature on the sub- ject, to which I referred in my last letter. Your readers may also wonder with what knowledge or justification he continues to pontificate about revanchism, a stab-in-the- back myth and the postwar development of Germany. He quotes no authority and ignores what I said about Muller. He evi- dently thinks he knows better, just as he thought he knew better about the SS than did the plotting generals; and he appears to believe that he can win an argument and persuade your readers by mere repetitive assertion. He should ask Germans of differ- ent types and ages, as I have often done over the years, what they and others would now be thinking if the plot had succeeded.
Mr Roberts muddies the water by accus- ing me of wilful misrepresentation and by descending to personal abuse. He had accused me of relying on 'a German colonel' for a belief that 'British-backed murderers of the Fiihrer were genuinely likely to be popular with the Wehnnacht as it fought. . . on two fronts'. (What I rely on is knowledge gained in more than half a century of close contact with Germany and the Germans.) I had no reason at all not to take what he wrote at its face value.
He now says he 'presupposed that the Churchill government had gone down the road proposed by Joachim Fest, Richard Lamb and Mr Platt, and had given logistical support to the July plotters'. He had no jus- tification for assuming that I take this view. I do not, and nothing that I have written indicates it. I cannot see that logistical sup- port was necessary. Von Stauffenberg's bomb was perfectly adequate, and only appalling luck prevented it from killing Hitler.
I will add two points: The Wehrmacht would not have been fighting on two fronts. As Mr Lamb pointed out, von Kluge would have surrendered in the West. And the situ- ation postulated is absurd: successful plot- ters, if British-backed, would never have told the German public and army that they were helped by the enemy.
Lindsey Platt
3 Sherwood Avenue, Fallowfield, Manchester
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